The New Global Warming Thread

[AMosely]

I didn't say I don't believe in the environment, I don't believe in what overboard environmentalists preach. This "Religion" of the environmentalist wackos is more harmful to those who live in the areas that they profess that they are protecting.

That's what I thought, and that makes sense. Believe it or not I agree with you. There may be as many environmentalists causing harm as there are those who are actually benefiting mankind. And again, the same may be largely true of religion. It's an interesting analogy.

I personally am very concerned about environmentalism that benefits mankind, hence this thread. I guess this is about where we begin to disagree.

[GhostintheShell]

I'd like to put you to the test of finding an example of "perfect environmentalism" past or present that only "benefits mankind".

Every past environmental cause I can think of that the environmental movement has taken up as its flavor of the month IMO has ended a failure or is at the very best highly debateable as to its success or failure. (At the very worst in some cases causing a greater problem than they were trying to save us from in the first place.)

Sometimes failures in terms of actually helping the cause they were trying to "protect", sometimes winning the primary cause at the expense of another aspect of the environment, and sometimes just resulting in a waste of capital and energy that could have been much better used elsewhere in society.

[Franko]

I remember a few years ago, some animal rights activists liberated about 500 mink on a farm near where I grew up... they thought they were doing a good thing, but for months after cars were running over mink, many starved to death, and those that survived, even now, more than a decade later are in the wetlandstaking out Muskrat and other wildlife that has never encountered this species before.

This being said, does that mean environmentalism is therefore bad? There is no essentialist environmentalism, just as there is no essentialist anything, there is no such thing as a perfect ideology, science, politics or anything. If we find flaws in some aspects of environmentalism, such as in deep ecology or even in some facets of the very methodologies used in environmental science, does that mean that it is all junk and should be abandoned??? I seriously hope not, because if that's case then all the folks who are agonizing about how flawed environmentlism is are hypocrits, unless you are nihilists and believe in nothing, then by all means take it apart piece by piece.

[AMosely]

I'd like to put you to the test of finding an example of "perfect environmentalism" past or present that only "benefits mankind".

Start with the concepts of overfishing and sustainable marine harvests. Once thought of as environmental rhetoric, it is now understood to be a serious international problem. The formation and international work of the Marine Stewardship Council (among other organizations) has been instrumental in preventing the collapse of many of the world's marine fisheries.

Along these same lines, and more local to me, there are several organizations who are working with local fishermen to restore the freshwater spawning grounds for wild Atlantic Salmon - a species that has been in decline at least in part to the introduction of hydroelectric power dams that have no fish passage. This type of restorative and sustainable environmentalism does indeed go to serve all - from sportsmen and fishermen to consumers.

Also, don't confuse animal rights with environmentalism - these are two different things. With regard to animals and wildlife, species preservation and restoration is environmentalism, but animal treatment based on moral or philosophical grounds is not.

[Steeler]

A lot of professional environmentalism is more like modern land and resource management than activism. Just about any major industry involved in resource harvesting, construction, farming, or large facilities incorporates some form of environmentalist philosophy.

Whenever I hear people arguing against "environmentalism" (or capitalism, or income tax, or social security) I think of a line from Firefly - Mal: "Why're we arguing 'bout what's already been decided?"

[AMosely]

I've also heard the two main types of environmentalism described as "light green" and "dark green."

[SmokingTarpan]

Interesting argument about global warming.

http://www.break.com/index/tough-to-argue.html

It's basically a modified Pascal's Wager, though his logic seems a little flawed compared to the way I was taught the argument.

[Nikolas]

It's the Precautionary Principle. It's nonsense.

[Kerostasis]

He spends 9 minutes and 15 seconds setting up a complicated scenario (which I'll give him credit for, its a decent scenario). Then he takes 4 seconds to say "because of that complicated scenario, therefore conclusion X". He offers no logical reason why conclusion X follows from the scenario, it just does apparently. So there's the hole in his logic--he didn't have any logic for his conclusion, just an assertion.

[CingularDuality]

However, I hope your not offering the "everyone has a bias" argument to discredit the mountains of peer reviewed science which shows human activity as a primary cause of Global Warming.

Y'know, it was nice discussing facts and opinions, and then you had to go and try to slip this in here...

[TheFatKidDeath]

Y'know, it was nice discussing facts and opinions, and then you had to go and try to slip this in here...

He who lives in glass houses should not throw..... oh never mind.

[AMosely]

Breaking my own rule here with a newspaper post, but this one is fairly grounded and offers some interesting, albeit not extremely surprising facts. Of course, caution the NYTimes bias (they accept as truth that global warming is occuring).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/sc...=1&oref=slogin

[Lucky Shot]

Solar Radiation is the primary reason why Kilimanjaro's glaciers are disappearing. Through a process of sublimation, the glaciers don't even melt, they turn directly into water vapor. Sublimation is occuring faster than precipitation can drop new snow. This lack of precipitation on the mountain has caused the mountain cap to decrease through this natural process.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...ype=RSS&rpc=22

[GhostintheShell]

"Here is the real inconvienient truth...
Water Vapour is up to 40000 parts per million volume of air - variable - typically 10000.
It's molecule has a greenhouse effect three times that of Carbon Dioxide.
Carbon Dioxide at a concentration of 370 parts per million volume is, in effect, not actually a Greenhouse gas at all."

[deathknight]

"But for temperate glaciers, there is ample evidence that they are shrinking, in part because of warming from greenhouse gases."

From the article in the link posted by Lucky Shot.